Preface (Proem) and Book One — Citizens and Soldiers

To Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, Gentleman of Florence

Many, Lorenzo, have held and still hold this opinion: that there is nothing in the world so unlike another, and so dissimilar, as the civil life is to the military. So we often see that when a man decides to make his career as a soldier, he at once changes not only his dress but his habits, his customs, his voice and his bearing, and puts off every civil manner. For he does not believe that a man can wear civilian clothes who wants to be ready and quick for every violence; nor can civil customs and habits be kept by one who judges them effeminate and unfit for his trade; nor does it seem fitting to keep an ordinary face and voice for one who, with his beard and his oaths, wants to frighten other men.

But if one considered the ancient institutions, one would find nothing more united, more in harmony, nor necessarily so closely bound together as these two. For all the arts that are ordered in a city for the common good of men, all the institutions made there so that men may live in fear of the laws and of God, would be vain if their defences were not prepared. When these are well ordered, they keep the others alive, even if the others are not well ordered. And so, on the contrary, good order without military help comes apart no differently than the rooms of a superb and royal palace, adorned with gems and gold, which, being uncovered, have nothing to defend them from the rain.

But because military institutions have become entirely corrupt and far removed from the ancient ways, these sinister opinions have arisen that make the military hated and contact with those who practise it shunned. And judging, from what I have seen and read, that it is not impossible to bring them back to the ancient ways and restore to them some form of their past virtue, I have decided, so as not to pass my idle time without doing something, to write for the satisfaction of those who are lovers of ancient actions what I understand of the art of war. And although it is a bold thing to treat a subject of which others have made a profession, I do not think it an error to occupy with words a rank which many, with greater presumption, have occupied with deeds. For the errors I may make in writing can be corrected without harm to anyone; but those which they make in deeds cannot be known except with the ruin of empires.

You, Lorenzo, will consider the quality of these labours of mine, and give them the blame or praise you think they deserve. I send them to you as a sign of my gratitude for the benefits I have received from you. And because in such works it is customary to honour men famous for nobility, wealth, ability and generosity, I know that you have few equals in nobility and wealth, few in ability, and none in generosity.

Book One

Since I believe it is permitted to praise any man after his death without blame, I want to praise Cosimo Rucellai, whose name I never remember without tears, having known in him those qualities which a good friend wants from his friends and a citizen from his country. I do not know of anything, not even his life, that he would not have given gladly for his friends, nor of any enterprise he would have feared if he had seen good in it for his country. And I confess freely that among the many men I have known and dealt with, I have found none in whom the spirit was more fired for great and magnificent things. Nor did he complain of anything at his death except that he was born to die young in his own house, without honour, and without having been able, as he wished, to help anyone. I must therefore record a conversation that took place in his gardens, not long ago, with the lord Fabrizio Colonna.

Fabrizio was coming back from Lombardy, where he had fought long and with great glory for the Catholic King, and passing through Florence to rest a few days, he was invited by Cosimo to his gardens. There gathered with them several young men who loved such discussions: Zanobi Buondelmonti, Battista della Palla and Luigi Alamanni, all young, all of ardent spirit, all lovers of the same studies. It being very hot, they withdrew into the most secret and shaded part of the garden, and sat down there.

Fabrizio said the place was most pleasant, and looking at the trees, and not recognising some of them, he was in doubt. Cosimo saw it and said:

COSIMO: Perhaps you do not know some of these trees. But do not wonder at it, for some of them were more celebrated by the ancients than they are today. My grandfather Bernardo planted them, imitating the ancients, and took delight in this cultivation.

FABRIZIO: I thought it was as you say. And this place and this pursuit make me think of some princes of the Kingdom of Naples who delight in these ancient cultivations and shades. (Here he stopped, as if he had reconsidered.) But I would not want to be thought of as offensive. I speak only of the matter itself. How much better it would have been — with respect to all — had they tried to imitate the ancients in the strong and harsh things, not in the delicate and soft ones; in the things done in the sun, not in the shade; to take their way of life from the true and perfect antiquity, not from the false and corrupt one. For when these pursuits pleased my Romans, my country fell into ruin.

COSIMO: You have opened the way to a discussion I very much wanted. Tell me, then, without hesitation: how is it that you, who blame those who do not imitate the ancients in serious matters, have not imitated them yourself in war, which is your art, and in which you are judged excellent?

FABRIZIO: You have come to the point to which my words were leading. Men who want to do something must first prepare themselves with all diligence, so that when the opportunity comes they are ready to carry out what they have proposed. And because, when such preparations are made cautiously, they are not seen, no one can be accused of negligence if the opportunity has not first revealed them; and if, when it comes, he then does not act, it is seen either that he has not prepared enough or that he has not thought of it. And since no occasion has come to me to show the preparations I have made to bring military affairs back to their ancient orders, if I have not done so, I cannot be blamed by you or by anyone.

COSIMO: But how could you have shown it, even had you wished?

FABRIZIO: I would have liked to show it in the thing itself, but I have never had the power. I am not a prince; I command other men's soldiers. A man who would imitate the ancients needs subjects of his own whom he can command and train as he wishes. I have never had such matter in my hands.

COSIMO: Then tell us, so that we may learn: what is the first thing one must order?

FABRIZIO: First let us see what the art of war is, and who should practise it. War is an art by which men cannot live honestly at all times. So it cannot be used as an art except by a republic or a kingdom. Neither of these, when well ordered, has ever allowed any of its citizens or subjects to practise it as his art; nor has any good man ever practised it as his particular art. For he will never be judged good who does a work in which, to profit from it at all times, he must be rapacious, fraudulent and violent, and have many qualities that necessarily make him not good. Nor can men who practise it as an art, the great as well as the small, be made otherwise, for this art does not feed them in peace. So they are forced either to hope there will be no peace, or to make such gains in time of war that they can feed themselves in peace. And neither of these thoughts is in a good man.

From the wish to feed oneself always come the robberies, the violences, the murders that such soldiers do to friends as well as enemies. From the wish not to have peace come the deceptions captains practise on those who hire them, so that the war lasts. And if peace does come, it often happens that these captains, deprived of their pay and their way of life, raise the banner of fortune and plunder a province without pity.

Have you not in your memory how, when the wars ended in Italy, many soldiers found themselves without pay, gathered in companies called "the Companies," and went about levying ransom on the towns and sacking the country, without anyone able to stop them? Have you not read how the Carthaginian soldiers, after the first war with the Romans, gathered under Matho and Spendius and made a more dangerous war on Carthage than the one just finished? In the time of our fathers, Francesco Sforza, to be able to live honourably in time of peace, not only deceived the Milanese, whose soldier he was, but took their liberty from them and became their prince. All the other soldiers of Italy who have used the military as their particular art have been like this; and if, through their wickedness, they have not become dukes of Milan, they deserve to be blamed all the more, for without so much profit they have all had the same charges laid against them.

COSIMO: But you yourself have spent your life in arms. Do you not use war as your art?

FABRIZIO: Since you cite me, I will take myself as the example. I say that I have never used war as an art, because my art is to govern my subjects and defend them; and to be able to defend them, to love peace and to know how to make war. And my king does not reward and esteem me so much for understanding war as for knowing how to counsel him in peace. No king, then, if he is wise, should want around him anyone who is not made this way. For if he has around him too many lovers of peace, or too many lovers of war, they will lead him into error.

COSIMO: And the men-at-arms whom kings keep in pay even in peacetime — what of them?

FABRIZIO: A well-ordered kingdom should avoid such craftsmen all the more, because they alone are the corruption of their king and, in everything, the ministers of tyranny. To make war forever is impossible; to pay them forever is impossible; and to keep them is to run the risk that they take your kingdom from you. The strength of armies lies in the infantry, and a king must order it so that his men, in time of peace, are glad to go home and live by their own trades. If he keeps men who know no other trade than war, he must either always be at war, or always pay them, or always fear them.

COSIMO: And yet the Romans, as you say, were good. How did they make war?

FABRIZIO: Rome, as long as it was well ordered — which was until the Gracchi — never had a soldier who took up this practice as an art. So it had few bad soldiers, and those were severely punished. A well-ordered city should therefore want this study of war to be used in time of peace as an exercise, and in time of war out of necessity and for glory; and should give it to the public alone to use as an art, as Rome did. Any citizen who has another end in such exercise is not good; and any city that is governed otherwise is not well ordered. Regulus, when he was captain of the Roman armies in Africa and had almost defeated the Carthaginians, asked the Senate for leave to return home to look after his little farm, which his workers had spoiled. From this one sees that he was no bad man, nor did he use war as an art. And while Rome was free, its great captains all came out of their houses to make war and went back to them when it was over.

COSIMO: Granting all this, whom should a prince or republic choose for its soldiers?

FABRIZIO: The best armies are those of one's own subjects. These cannot be made except by compulsion — not by asking for volunteers. For if you take only those who come forward of their own will, you will get not the best but the worst of the country: the idle, the restless, the blasphemers, the gamblers, the badly brought up. And if you choose by compulsion, you choose from the healthy and the honest. The ancients called this the delectus — the choosing. And I say one should take them from the countryside rather than from the cities, for the men of the country, used to hard work, to sun and cold, to the spade and the burden, are more fit for arms. A city man is better for cavalry and for certain special services; but the body of the army should come from the fields.

COSIMO: And at what age?

FABRIZIO: If I were making a new army, I would take them from seventeen to forty. If the army were already made and I had only to keep it supplied, I would take them always at seventeen. And I would look at the body as the ancients did: lively and cheerful eyes, a sinewy neck, a broad chest, muscular arms, long fingers, little belly, rounded flanks, lean legs and feet. A man made like this is always quick and strong, which are the two things one seeks above all in a soldier. But above all one should look to his habits: that there should be honesty and shame in him. Otherwise one chooses an instrument of scandal and a beginning of corruption.

COSIMO: There are many who say that such an ordinance of armed citizens is useless; others, that it is dangerous to liberty.

FABRIZIO: Those who say it is useless judge by bad experience. They say: our militia has done badly. I answer that it is not the militia's fault, but the fault of those who did not order it well. It is not perfect, but it is better than nothing. Would you rather be defended by your own men, badly trained, or by mercenaries who will betray you at the first chance? And as for the danger to liberty, look at Rome, which remained free for four hundred years while armed; Sparta, eight hundred. Many other cities, unarmed, have not been free for forty. For a city always needs arms; and if it has none of its own, it hires foreigners, and foreign arms are much more dangerous to the public good, because they are more easily corrupted and a citizen who is becoming powerful can more readily use them. It was not the armed citizens who took Rome's liberty, but the long commands which let a captain make the soldiers his own; Caesar could not have done what he did with soldiers who had homes to go back to after each campaign. Arms in the hands of citizens or subjects, given by the laws and order, have never done harm; on the contrary they always do good, and keep cities uncorrupted longer than without them.

COSIMO: The Venetians have long been powerful, and yet they never made themselves masters of Italy. Why?

FABRIZIO: At sea they were armed with their own citizens, and there they fought their wars with virtù and, arms in hand, enlarged their country. But when the time came that they had to make war on land, they did not use their own men; they hired captains and mercenaries. Had they armed themselves on land as they armed themselves at sea, they might have made a monarchy of the world. The first captain they hired on land was a foreigner, and from then on they were at the mercy of hired men.

COSIMO: And if one arms so many citizens, will not the captains who command them be able to make factions, and turn them against the state?

FABRIZIO: Well-ordered men, armed or unarmed, fear the laws; they never become dangerous unless the heads you give them make them so. And the way to prevent this is to change the heads every year, moving them from one district to another, so that no captain has the same men under him long enough to make them his own. For continued authority over the same place and the same men breeds a union that can be turned to the harm of the prince.

COSIMO: And how many should one enrol?

FABRIZIO: As many as one can, rather more than fewer. For a larger number lets you choose the best, and an army is not made weaker by its numbers if it is well ordered. Confusion comes not from the multitude of armed men but from the lack of order among them.

COSIMO: And the cavalry?

FABRIZIO: They should be chosen in the same way, from among those who can keep a horse, and trained in the same way. But I will speak of the cavalry later. Today it is late, and I have spoken enough of the choosing of men. Tomorrow, if you wish, we can speak of how they should be armed.